


parallelism and other universal constants

by rosycheeked



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Banter, F/M, First Kiss, Getting Together, Internal Monologue, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Ronan Lynch, Pining, References to Canon, Role Reversal, Ronan Lynch Has Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:42:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26884585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosycheeked/pseuds/rosycheeked
Summary: In another world, Gansey and Blue fall in love a little bit like this. But in this one, fate twists and it’s Adam and Ronan instead, like it was meant to be. In other worlds they will fall in love still, just not as quickly. In this one they have places to be. In this one they find each other first.Or: a story about orange juice, falling in love, and other things that are louder in the dark.
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 21
Kudos: 138





	parallelism and other universal constants

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tamquams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamquams/gifts).



> hello and welcome! I can't believe this is finally done, but here it is! my very first pynch.
> 
> it is, of course, dedicated to the wonderful jamie, known here as chuckbass—everyone go read her fics right now, they're all incredible and I am personally inspired by her work. jamie, I have you to thank for motivating me to finish my first real WIP in months. ily!
> 
> hope you all enjoy the thing that happened when I tried to construct a canon-adjacent universe and ended up with a non-linear narrative that's sort of meta and also a commentary on the multiverse!
> 
> E
> 
> *warning for a canon-typical amount of cursing*

Afterward, people always ask about them with an odd sort of surprise. _Parrish?_ they say, a bit wonderingly. _Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch?_

Aglionby’s not as big of a school as it seems at first. They all know, somehow, within a week or two. Ronan knows how they work, knows how they tick, knows they look at him and Adam and see Ronan Lynch, rich and rude and reckless, and Adam Parrish, model student in secondhand sweaters, and think: _how did that happen?_

There’s another world, another time—but a similar place—where Ronan’s a bit more of a dreamer, and Adam’s sacrificed more of himself, and Noah’s a little _less_ , and there’s a girl in a house of psychics who’s cursed but falls in love anyway. Gansey’s still looking for his king, though, in this one. He searches in every world and time and place for something. In this one he will find it. In another world, he finds it but it’s not enough. That’s not quite what this is about.

Ronan doesn’t know about that world, not really, but sometimes he has these dreams of blackened trees and golden hair and hooves and wakes up feeling like he’s lost something. One day, he’ll find out that Adam has these dreams too, of forests and laughter, of horrors that come at night. They’ll figure it out or they won’t; depends on the world and the time and the place. That’s not quite what this is about, either.

No, this one’s an answer to a question all of Aglionby sort of wants to know, but no one asks because, really. Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch? How did _that_ happen?

...

In another world, Gansey and Blue fall in love a little bit like this. But in this one, fate twists and it’s Adam and Ronan instead, like it was meant to be. In other worlds they will fall in love still, just not as quickly. In this one they have places to be. In this one they find each other first.

Gansey’s away in DC the first time it happens. It’s something about Monmouth at two in the morning feeling empty like it never does, the moonlight hitting Gansey’s miniature Henrietta and Ronan waking up from an entirely unrestful sleep (he doesn’t think about his nightmares, he doesn’t) and wishing there would be some fucking orange juice in the place.

There isn’t. So he can’t sleep, there’s no juice, and Gansey’s not there to accompany him in his insomnia. It never occurs to him to go buy some orange juice alone. Even for a second, he never considers waking Noah, who for some reason has never lost a night of sleep in his life, the shit.

He pops on his headphones, puts on something with a pounding bass, closes his eyes—and opens them again, because being alone right now is entirely impossible. So he does the unthinkable. He picks up his phone.

He picks up the phone and calls Adam.

( _How’d you know he would pick up?_ Blue asks. Later.

 _Shut up,_ Ronan snaps. _I just knew._ )

There’s a click when Adam picks up, then some shuffling. Then his voice, scratchy and low but there: “Ronan?”

He realizes belatedly that he has no idea what to say. “Uh,” he says. Great start, dipshit. “Hi.”

“Is something wrong?” Adam asks, and Ronan realizes, shit, it’s two AM, and he’s probably woken Adam from the little sleep he was getting.

“Never mind, Parrish, nothing—nothing’s wrong,” he answers quickly, and damn, he’s only gotten smoother, clearly.

Adam snorts quietly, and Ronan fights the _absurd_ urge to smile. And blush. “Sure, _Lynch_. You called me in the middle of the night to tell me nothing’s wrong?”

“Yeah,” Ronan says. “Exactly. So you can go the fuck back to sleep now.”

Adam actually chuckles at that one. It’s not that funny, it really isn’t. Ronan pointedly does not imagine Adam’s smile, or the way his lips must be curling up at the corners, or the way Adam’s probably chewing on his lip like he always does when he’s on the phone. Ronan does not imagine this, because he does not know or care about Adam Parrish’s smile.

No, he doesn’t.

“Are you sure?” Adam says after a moment, softer.

Ronan huffs. Now it sounds like Adam is asking him to talk, and he’s—not going to turn it down. He should, but. “I—“ _had a nightmare._ “can stay up a little later if you wanna talk. I know you’re dying for my company.”

He’s never had particularly good self-control when it comes to Adam. So Ronan slouches in his bed and holds his phone to his ear until his hand gets sweaty, and then he switches it to the other ear, and he doesn’t think about Adam not being able to do that. Instead, they talk for an hour in hushed voices and Ronan makes Adam laugh four times and at three in the morning they say their goodbyes and that’s it. And why would Ronan think for a second it would happen again?

Even so, he doesn’t have any more nightmares that night. Or the next, actually.

( _I’m just that good,_ Adam snarks. Later.

 _You wish,_ Ronan replies, and it’s not half as scathing as he means it to be. It sounds almost fond. He’s going soft, isn’t he? Jesus.)

...

The second time, it’s a week later, and Ronan can’t blame the circumstances. Gansey’s there after the nightmare, just—he’s sleeping, and he rarely gets a full night’s sleep, and Ronan doesn’t want to wake him. He actually walks right up to Gansey’s bed, but he looks so peaceful, and—

( _Aw, you do care,_ Gansey says, later.

 _Will wonders never cease?_ adds Blue.

Ronan doesn’t even pay them any attention. Nope. Not a smidge.)

He doesn’t want to wake Gansey, but he never claimed his logic was sound, either. He thinks of Adam’s calloused hands wrapped around a beaten-up cell phone, his laugh echoing in Ronan’s ear, and he’s dialled the number before he even thinks about it. It rings once, twice, and Adam shouldn’t pick up, it’s the middle of the night. He shouldn’t.

“Yes?” But there he is.

“I—“ Ronan stammers, like an idiot. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Adam replies. His voice isn’t pure politeness, but it isn’t snark either. Ronan’s mind sticks on the slight thickness in his voice, the catch in it from being just woken up. 

“Did you know,” Ronan says abruptly, “that ravens mate for life?”

“Now I do,” Adam says. He doesn’t comment on the hour or the slight shake in Ronan’s voice. He just says, “So do beavers.”

“Are you saying that beavers are on the same level as ravens?” Ronan says, and he can almost pretend that this is normal, that he can close his eyes and see Adam’s face and not—

Well.

“What’s wrong with beavers, then?” Adam retorts, and then they’re falling into a rhythm again.

They talk for an hour. Ronan drinks some orange juice straight out of the carton.

(Later, Noah says, _That’s disgusting, dude._

 _You don’t even drink orange juice, Noah,_ Gansey points out.

 _Whose side are you on?_ Noah retorts through gritted teeth. _You drink it, don’t you?_ )

He can’t sleep, even after all that, so he heads out, ends up at the 24-hour pharmacy. Like clockwork, he thinks of Adam. With the twenty-dollar bill in his pocket, he buys some relatively un-shitty hand cream, as far as hand creams go.

The next day, he leaves it in the driver’s seat of Adam’s relatively very-shitty car. The shittiest. He attaches a handwritten note to the small white container. In Latin, because, uh. Adam’ll get it, and know it was Ronan who left it, and damn, he’s pathetic. He leaves it anyway.

 _Manibus,_ the note reads. _For your hands._

...

The thing is, one or two times can be explained away. But the third time, when he picks up his phone, which he nearly never did before he and Adam started doing— _this_ , he hasn’t even had a nightmare. He doesn’t even bother coming up with a flimsy fucking excuse. Nope. He just wakes up, rolls over, calls Adam.

He doesn’t even think twice. It doesn’t scare him till later, after they’ve talked for a good while, and Ronan’s just staring up at the ceiling like a fool.

A voice in his head that sounds uncannily like Gansey says, _Who the hell are you and what have you done with Ronan Lynch?_

(Later, Gansey laughs and says, _Am I your conscience?_

 _As close to one as you can get, I’d think,_ Blue adds.)

And he’s not doing anything inherently wrong, he tells himself time and again. So he’s calling his kind-of-rival-turned-best-friend’s-friend-turned-maybe-best-friend in the middle of the night. So it’s kind of a secret. So it’s becoming a habit.

So he might want a little bit more than friendship.

It’s not like the whole feelings thing hit him all at once. It was more like seeing lightning and then losing count of the seconds before the thunder showed up. It was like watching someone’s hands when maybe you should’ve been watching their eyes. It was like looking at the stars for so long that when you closed your eyes, you could still see them on the backs of your eyelids. When Ronan closes his eyes, he can see Adam. And he can sleep after he talks to him.

And so he keeps calling, mostly on nightmare nights but sometimes just because. And then it’s been two weeks, maybe a little more, and Ronan hasn’t stopped calling. And Adam? He always picks up. He starts being awake already when Ronan calls.

Ronan starts having fewer nightmares. He dreams about a forest that speaks, about fireflies made only of light. After he talks to Adam, he dreams. He dreams and all the while he feels—awake.

...

This is a lie: Ronan Lynch always tells the truth.

This is a truth: Ronan Lynch does not like lies.

Most people wouldn’t see the difference between the two. In fact, most people take Ronan’s more cryptic comments as nonsense and ignore him. Their loss.

( _That’s because what you just said makes no sense,_ Blue insists later.

 _Are you even listening, Sargent?_ Ronan shoots back. _Isn’t that what I said?_

Quietly, Noah says, _I get what you mean, Ronan._

And Adam shoots Ronan a knowing look.)

The problem is, Ronan’s been calling Adam even when he doesn’t have an excuse to, and whoever said a lie of omission wasn’t as bad as a flat-out lie was a liar too.

The problem is, Ronan’s got maybe-feelings for Adam, and he hasn’t been forthright about any of them, and that means every time he calls in the middle of the night it’s been a lie, because every time Adam asks why he’s calling he just laughs, or makes up an excuse, or tells him it’s just to keep Adam company. Every call is a truth all wrapped up in lies and deflections.

The problem is, all of this hits Ronan at once. One minute he’s on the phone, and he says, “Excuse you, my music taste is fucking exquisite, you have no right—“

And Adam’s saying, “You wish your music taste didn’t peak with that murder squash song—“

It hits Ronan just like that. How well they know each other. How even in the morning he can recall the exact timbre of Adam’s voice, the pitch and roll of his laugh.

Holy shit, he thinks during that split-second crisis. He’s in love with Adam Parrish. And every call has been a lie because he’s been in love with Adam all along, and he hasn’t told Adam about it at all. He’s just been taking and taking and he hasn’t given a thing. That’s not love, he knows. And he can’t do that to Adam. He can’t.

So he sputters out something like, “I’m sorry, I—I have to go,” and then he just fucking—hangs up. Yeah, he isn’t really thinking anything through. He should’ve seen this coming, though, because no one can watch their supposed best friend’s hands for so long _platonically_. Or count their freckles, or memorize the curve of their smile and the sound of their voice. That’s not what friends do.

(Later, Blue says summarily, _Basically, you’re an idiot, Lynch._

Ronan pretends he can’t see Gansey looking at Blue with something akin to pride. Blue, fitting right in with the rest of them like she’s always been there.

Besides, Ronan knows that look he sees in Gansey’s eyes. It’s the same one he was just describing, one that knows hands and contours and the arc of a grin. It’s the gaze of a would-be lover.)

Anyway, Ronan’s just begun what is sure to be a fantastic existential crisis when, like a miracle, his phone vibrates in his hand. It’s Adam.

Adam fucking Parrish was _calling him back_.

He has a second for a flood of panic-filled thoughts to occur to him, none of which he even stops to consider.

Adam’s never been the one to call before. This means something. This thing between them means something to them _both_.

Ronan picks up.

Skipping a greeting, Adam asks, “Why?”

And he doesn’t have an answer for that.

_Why do you call me, Ronan? Why do you talk to me when it’s dark outside and then act as if it never happened once the sun comes up? Why do you look at me when you think I’m not looking? Why?_

“Let’s go for a drive,” Ronan says: a non-answer. He’s there in ten minutes.

Adam climbs into the passenger seat without a word, the silence like a heavy blanket. Ronan knows, distantly, that he could make a snarky comment, maybe add a swear word or two. It’s his brand, after all, breaking things, breaking silences. But it seems so crude to say something like that here, sitting next to Adam, driving to nowhere, the streetlights like miniature stars as Ronan slowly devolves into an increasingly poetic internal monologue.

The worst part—the best part—is that he doesn’t even fucking mind. In this uncharacteristic quiet he can almost forget who he is, what he is supposed to say, how he is supposed to feel. He can just be.

There’s only a couple other cars on the road, so he keeps stealing glances at Adam, which gives him a peculiar sort of shiver. Here, he can forget that he is Ronan Lynch and thus full of acid words and cutting remarks. He is just a boy with jagged edges sitting beside a boy who is beautiful.

He wants to put words to something that does not exist. Hearing music when there’s none playing. Petrichor. A falling leaf landing on your shoulder. There are words for this feeling and there aren’t. Ronan doesn’t want to think about it and he does. He breathes, and he breathes, and he is waiting for his heart to stop feeling like it’s going to shake out of his chest though it never does.

Ronan wants to ask, _Who am I? What are we? What is this? What are we doing here?_

They pull to the side of the road some distance down the highway, but they don’t get out of the car. Adam says, “Do you ever feel like you’re full of secrets?”

 _Always,_ Ronan wants to say. _I am a secret_ and _you are a secret_ and _if I kissed you, would it be a secret?_

“Who am I keeping them from?” he asks instead. A question for a question, his specialty.

Adam exhales softly. “Yourself, Ronan. Who else?”

Something about the way Adam says his name makes Ronan feel charged. Like the lightning is coiled and about to strike. Adam curls his name into the air, drawled and deliberate, and Ronan hears it in unexplainable echoes. He hears it in dreams.

“You,” Ronan says, and it’s a truth.

“I suppose I wouldn’t know,” Adam retorts, a grin in his voice.

Ronan suppresses the urge to grin himself. “According to you, I wouldn’t either.”

“What a pair we make,” says Adam, “you and I.”

Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch. They are a pair indeed.

In his bedroom, hours later, Ronan catches himself thinking about it for the third or maybe tenth time. Talking to Adam is like solving a riddle that keeps on changing the each time you get close to the solution, he muses. It is putting together a puzzle with pieces that morph the moment you turn away. It requires your entire focus, or none at all. 

And it had felt ever more dangerous to sit beside Adam when Ronan had made him smile. Even in the dark. Especially in the dark.

...

The next time—because of course there is a next time—it has only been two days since they went on a drive and sat in charged silence and yearned. Well, Ronan had yearned, anyway.

(Noah sort of gapes at him, later.

 _You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?_ says Blue.

 _You bet,_ Ronan tells her. The story isn’t over yet.)

He calls Adam at 2:41 in the morning, the particular shade of darkness of the hour an old friend. No nightmares, but he can’t sleep. He’s even done all his homework, for fuck’s sake, and he hasn’t done that since—since—he can’t actually remember.

One ring, two rings, and Adam picks up.

“Hey,” Ronan says.

“What’s up,” says Adam.

Ronan feels warm all over. “Can’t sleep.”

“Me neither,” Adam replies, and Ronan has sat next to him now, has seen his face in conjunction with his words, has watched his mouth smooth all the corners of his accent, and abruptly Ronan is incredibly restless. He jerks to his feet.

“What’s, uh,” Ronan says, opening his bedroom door and heading toward the kitchen, “what’s keeping you up, then?”

Adam half-laughs, half-sighs. “I don’t know. I’m just up.”

“Be careful, Parrish, or you’ll go all nocturnal like me,” Ronan says, and he paces the length of the kitchen once, twice, sinks down onto the cold floor.

Adam snorts, and Ronan’s mind unhelpfully supplies him with the image of Adam’s face mid-laugh, the patterns of his freckles all scrambled, his smile—fuck.

“You’re worried about my sleeping habits? How sweet.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Ronan snaps. There’s no venom in it. 

Adam snorts again. “If I did, who would talk to you in the middle of the night, huh? Don’t tell me you’d actually think of waking Noah.”

“Even if hell came up and swallowed him, he wouldn’t wake up,” Ronan says. “He sleeps like the goddamn dead.”

(In another world—well, you already know.

The irony only works if you already know.)

“You’re a menace, Lynch,” Adam says. “I’m telling Noah.”

“You do that. Anyone who doesn’t know and love me for the asshole I am has no business being friends with me, anyway,” Ronan declares.

“At least you’re self-aware,” Adam snipes back, and then they’re both laughing.

Once they’ve quieted, rather more soberly, Adam says, “I lied, before. When I said I didn’t know what was keeping me up.”

Ronan can hear his heartbeat, he can hear Adam’s breathing, and he wonders if he could hear them before and he just wasn’t listening. “What was it, then?” he asks.

Adam hesitates. Ronan hears Adam’s breathing stall for one moment, another, and then he answers: “You.”

And then Gansey walks in.

Ronan knows what it looks like. He knows he is sitting on the floor of the kitchen, on the phone, smiling. He knows that he looks like the exact opposite of the Ronan Lynch that he’s tried to ensure the whole world sees. The one that Gansey knows is mostly untrue. Ronan was born with the face of a liar, and he’s grown into it.

“Hold on,” he says to Adam, “I’ll call you back.” He won’t, though, not tonight. Not while “you” is still ringing in his ears. Like an echo of what Ronan had said in the car that night.

 _I’m keeping secrets, Adam,_ he wants to say before he hangs up the phone. _Not from myself, not anymore. From you._

_You._

He hangs up.

Gansey coughs politely, something Ronan has never tried to do but he knows he could never pull off. “Are you quite all right?” he asks.

Hearing someone’s voice that isn’t Adam’s or his own is somewhat jarring.

Ronan stands, trying to wipe away whatever expression has Gansey asking in the first place. “I’m fine,” he says. He isn’t. He wants to tear up every sheet of homework he’s done. His hands are shaking, a little.

Gansey peers at him a bit oddly.

( _I was trying,_ he says, later, _to figure out what had you all agitated._

 _How much of it did you even hear?_ Ronan asks.

 _Enough,_ Gansey replies, matter-of-fact.

Blue, in an exaggerated voice, announces, _Ladies and gentlemen, Richard Gansey III, eavesdropper extraordinaire!_

 _You are all insufferable,_ says Gansey.

 _I didn’t even do anything!_ Noah protests.

 _Guilty by association,_ Gansey tells him.

 _Nerd,_ Noah says, singsong.)

“Well,” Gansey says, “I suppose if you say you’re fine...”

He doesn’t finish his sentence.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ronan tells him.

Something in Gansey’s eyes glitters, something that only comes out late at night or deep in thought. It means: _this is a mystery and I am going to solve it_. It means: _you are an enigma, Ronan Lynch_.

He can hear it in Gansey’s voice. He hates that he knows what “enigma” means.

“Talk about what?” Gansey says, like it’s nothing, like he didn’t find Ronan in the most incriminating position Ronan could imagine. Gansey smiles, and it means: _I’m not as stupid as you think_.

Inexplicably, Ronan feels more known than he ever has. It’s weightless, it’s negative weight, he’s lighter than he’s been in months. He fights down the urge to smile back.

“Don’t fucking condescend to me,” he snarls instead, and Gansey shouldn’t be able to laugh that off, but he does, even as Ronan’s storming off. He’s taking the orange juice out of the fridge and he laughs.

And Ronan almost wishes he’d talked about it after all.

...

They go for another drive. 

Well, they call a few times, talking about nothing with an undercurrent of something for awhile, and at this point Ronan knows their conversations have more layers that he’s ignoring. He doesn’t want to peel them back, because if he doesn’t think about them, he doesn’t have to acknowledge them, he doesn’t have to change the way he and Adam seem to fit.

When he isn’t paying attention, he’ll think about it. His interactions with Adam, he muses, almost have the quality of a dream. On the verge of not making sense.

A week later Adam calls and says, “Can you pick me up?” And Ronan thinks, Oh.

Funny, he thinks, that a voice can sound so much like a home.

Is it really only the second time they’re doing this? It feels like he’s done it a thousand times before, drove his car through a syrupy darkness, a slow quiet, and ended up here in no time at all.

There’s only one highway out of Henrietta, but it goes in two directions. Ronan drives the other way, and to fill the silence Adam starts talking about some group assignment Ronan was probably supposed to have done too, and it all feels so right that Ronan almost expects something to go awry.

And nothing does.

There’s no rest stop at Exit 24. No gas station, no campgrounds. Just a dusty little parking lot and two barely-intact picnic tables.

He parks his car across all three spaces, just because he can, and then relishes in the dirty look Adam sends him.

“Hey, Parrish,” Ronan says, apropos of nothing. “Want to look at the stars?”

( _You brought him stargazing?_ Blue near-shrieks, later.

 _That’s, like, the epitome of romance, dude,_ Noah points out.

 _You’ve been spending too much time with Gansey,_ Adam says. _Epitome?_

Noah hurriedly rubs a hand over his mouth, then examines it, as if he’s expecting to find some sort of contaminant there. _How could you?_ he hisses, glaring.

Gansey watches this with a wry look. _My apologies, Noah. If it’s any consolation, I’m pretty sure Ronan’s reputation is ruined now too._

 _Are you just going to stand for this, Ronan?_ Blue demands. _He’s dragging you through the mud!_

 _You’re right,_ Ronan sighs, patting Gansey on the shoulder. _You should try out being the epitome of shut the fuck up._

Gansey doesn’t even look offended.)

Adam shrugs. They clamber out of the BMW in tandem and settle on the hood, perching on the edge and leaning back. The stars really are stunning.

He realizes he’s leaning toward Adam somewhat subconsciously. What is this but attraction in its simplest form, magnetism in its most literal sense.

He hasn’t stopped thinking about the tone of Adam’s voice when he said “You.” It’d been soft, sincere; a confession.

“Ronan,” Adam murmurs, and Ronan could scream with it. There is a symphony welling up inside him, an ocean’s worth of godforsaken ballads and aching melodies. If this is a hurricane, he may well be in the eye of the storm, but all he wants is to jump headfirst into the wind and seize a strike of lightning by the hand.

Perhaps he is the hurricane. The world spins and whirls and clamors and shouts, and yet in the moment Adam reaches for him it all goes still.

In another world, yes, there are so many other worlds where everything is the same and yet something is different; better worlds, worse worlds, magical and deadly worlds, cursed and lovely worlds. Some part of Ronan knows this. And some part of him—the same part, a bigger part, maybe—is coming to life as Adam leans toward him. This is the world, this is the place, this is the time. 

And there’s something to be said about getting caught in the rain, here. In the back of his mind, Ronan is counting each of Adam’s breaths. He’s hyper-aware of Adam’s hand on his shoulder blade, Adam’s heartbeat in time with his own, Adam’s eyes, wide and piercing and dark. Ronan is drowning. Adam kisses him, and his eyes flutter shut, and Ronan is counting his eyelashes by moonlight, and in anyone else’s arms it would be absolutely humiliating but this is Adam and Ronan is kissing him and he aches with it. He never wants to close his eyes again.

Words come to his lips unbidden. _Adam_ , he wants to say. He wants, he wants, he wants.

“Omnia iam fient quae posse negabam,” he whispers instead. _Everything I used to say could not happen will happen now._

(Gansey laughs a little helplessly, later. _You, Mr. Lynch, are a goddamn romantic._

Ronan scoffs.)

He and Adam are still for a moment, perched on the hood of the BMW. Adam leans back a few inches, lips parted, eyes searching Ronan’s face for—something. Ronan wants to kiss him again.

So he does. He kisses Adam under the stars, because he can, because he wants, he wants and he can have, and something possesses him to say, “Did I dream you?”

That doesn’t make sense at all, but Adam says, “Maybe you did.”

By some unspoken agreement, they both get into the car after that. Ronan executes an extremely illegal U-turn and begins to drive back toward Henrietta. He wonders if anyone is awake besides the two of them, at this hour. He wonders if he’s felt this awake since his father—well. Anyway.

Adam tangles his fingers with Ronan’s. Neither of them say a word on the drive back.

When he pulls up to St. Agnes, Adam’s unbuckling his seatbelt (fucking safety nerd) and opening the door before Ronan can even think of what to say.

He doesn’t want this to be it. He doesn’t want this to be over, to be just another dream. He wants to reach out and grab Adam’s hand and never let go.

But when Adam turns back, Ronan says nothing. He doesn’t even move. Adam opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, then doesn’t. His eyes are complicated and his mouth is twisted and Ronan is considering reaching out to smooth out the knot in his brow when Adam picks up Ronan’s hand and kisses it. Like a fucking gentleman from a century ago.

What the fuck is Ronan’s life?

“Good night,” Adam says, voice inexplicably rough, and shuts the door behind him before Ronan can even piece his brain back together.

And he definitely does not press the back of his hand to his mouth once Adam’s gone.

(Later, Adam clears his throat and places his hand in Ronan’s and avoids his eyes as he tells him, _Tamquam alter idem._

Gansey doesn’t laugh this time. He does raise one eyebrow, though, as if he didn’t learn that exact facial expression from Ronan himself.

 _That’s what I was going to say before I left,_ Adam continues.

 _What does it mean?_ Blue hisses to Noah, who shrugs.

 _I was never any good at Latin,_ he whispers back.

Ronan, though, Ronan’s top of their class. Even if his Latin is pretty shitty at times, he knows exactly what Adam means. _As if a second self._ Cicero. He’s never wanted to kiss Adam more than right now. Er, later. Whatever.)

Back at Monmouth, Gansey ambushes Ronan as soon as he comes through the door. He’d only been half expecting it, so it takes him a second too long to smother his uncharacteristically wide smile. Gansey, being Gansey, notices, and any actual concern slips off his face and transforms into a shit-eating grin.

“Had a good time, then?” he says.

Ronan wants to say nothing, brush Gansey off, and walk into his room so he can lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling and think of Adam’s eyes and his lips and the freckles on the bridge of his nose without anyone judging him for smiling like a fool. But he also thinks: if he says it out loud, it can’t be a dream anymore. It’ll be real.

So he blurts, “I kissed Adam,” and attempts to walk past Gansey to preserve some remaining portion of his dignity.

Of course, he’s conveniently forgotten that he didn’t have any in the first place, so when Gansey reaches out an arm to block him, Ronan stops short. “Yes?”

“Just—“ Gansey considers his words and seems to decide against saying something. “Happy for you guys.”

“Okay,” Ronan says, because he’ll take that over any sort of shovel-talk-lecture with far too many long and posh words for any sane person to deal with. Although if he were sane he would probably not be friends with Richard Gansey the fucking Third.

“Okay,” Gansey agrees. There’s more they’re saying—or not saying, depending on how you look at it—but they’ve known each other long enough that they can exchange those words without really saying them at all. Ronan has never been in love before, never even been kissed before tonight, but he knows. And Gansey can read it right in his eyes.

Ronan’s in love with Adam, and it’s not even a dream. None of this is a dream.

Turning, he stalks into the kitchen, yanks open the refrigerator, and in one smooth motion pulls the orange juice carton out, swigs the remainder, and thunks it, empty, onto the counter.

“It’s your turn to get the juice, Dick,” Ronan tells him.

“Whatever you say,” Gansey replies easily. He smiles, then. Or now, or later. Ronan doesn’t—or rather, he turns away before anyone can get proof of the contrary.

...

 _And that’s all,_ Ronan says, later. Now. _That’s the story._

Adam leans his head on Ronan’s shoulder and Noah whispers something in Blue’s ear that makes her laugh out loud and then Gansey walks over to them with an orange juice carton in one hand and a stack of paper cups in the other; God knows where he got them from.

He settles himself at the table and begins to pour the juice. Ronan looks over at Adam, who’s sitting up and watching Gansey pour, a smile twinkling in his eyes. He’s grinning a crooked, imperfect grin and Ronan’s so full of sunshine he could burst.

Gansey clears his throat, raises his cup. _A toast,_ he declares.

 _You pretentious fuck,_ Ronan says, but he raises his cup too. And somehow, he feels like he could take on the world if he wanted to. He feels whole again. He knows, now, that this is how it feels to be awake.

...

In another world, in another time, maybe it’s Gansey and Blue who take late night drives, and make illicit midnight calls. They do not kiss under the stars, but they almost do. They kiss instead in a forest that is not quite real. They kiss and Gansey dies, because in other worlds, magic very much _is_ real.

In those worlds Adam holds a toy car, and then Ronan does, and then neither of them do. Perhaps fate twists, and there in their places will be Blue and Gansey. Perhaps not.

None of these things have happened yet, but all of them will. In another world, in another time, in another place. Here are two boys with an ever-decreasing number of breaths between them. _Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch,_ they whisper in the halls. _Who knew?_

It will happen, or it is happening, or it has happened already. Watch.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, all! if you kudos & comment I will die for you. that is all. <3


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